Distributed network RAID

[Jason]

not that I dislike it per say,  just that the complexity is starting to
pile on.

The NFS suggestion was based on just needing access to the data from
multiple machines. If you need the data on multiple machines, the
easiest way would be to use LVM and rsync. flush the drive, LVM
Snapshot, rsync the snap over.
As for the iscsi,  check on sourceforge for linux and iscsi. You can
setup a linux box to be an iscsi target (or the latest versions of
solaris for that matter) and then viola, san in the house :)

Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> Jason wrote:
>> couple of options in easiest to most difficult order.
>>
>> if don't mind having access to a filesystem on only one node at a time,
>> just use NFS to mount the filesystem.
> 
> Thought NFS was more of a file-sharing thing so the data isn't really 
> redundant?
> 
> I was looking to have a copy of my data in a second location so I can 
> access it if the primary system/hard disk dies on me.
> 
>> rsync.  Run it every minute between the two hosts.
> 
> I'm thinking this could be error prone with files that are open or 
> half-copied at the time Rsync runs, plus rsync, if I recall, may suck up 
> the processor during the process if it must look at a large amount of 
> files and calculate diffs.
> 
> But then again, I thought rsync could copy portions of files if only a 
> section changes, and whenever I use it rsync copies the entire file 
> over. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.  I don't know.
> 
>> gfs or another clustered file system. Lets you use the same block device
>> on two machines at once.
>>
>> Get crazy with iscsi and gfs or maybe nbd.  This would most likely fail
>> in a very spectacular way when you are least able to handle a failure.
> 
> This is for a home setup, so I don't think I can afford an iscsi/NAS for 
> failover :-)
> 
> NBD sounds closer to what I was looking for, but I've never heard of 
> anyone using it before.  Sounds like you've use it before, though, since 
> you don't appear to like it too much...care to share 
> information/experiences on that?  I see NBD is supposed to be part of 
> the base Linux kernel, from just glancing over some material on it.
> 
>